Total pages in book: 179
Estimated words: 173733 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 869(@200wpm)___ 695(@250wpm)___ 579(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 173733 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 869(@200wpm)___ 695(@250wpm)___ 579(@300wpm)
“Hi, Cat.”
I blink to find Elsa standing in the doorway, looking blonde and beautiful as usual in a blue suit. She is beautiful and also with my husband all the time, but never once have I worried about them together. How many women would feel that confident with a man as successful and gorgeous as my husband? But I do.
“Hey, Elsa,” I greet. “I hear there are some bumps.”
“Have you heard the recording?”
“No. Bad?”
“Yeah. It’s bad. Your husband is going to have to work magic in his opening statement because of course, the jurors heard the tape. It’s everywhere.” She heads to the coffee pot, comfortable here, and why wouldn’t she be? Reese loves to hold game planning sessions here. I love that he loves to come home to find his magic with his cases.
I twist around to face her. “That doesn’t seem like the opposing counsel. Reese could move to delay the trial to allow a fair jury to be selected.”
“Cat.”
I turn to find Reese in the archway between the kitchen and the hallway. He motions me forward. Richard, another attorney on Reese’s team, walks in and heads to the coffee pot. “Hey, Cat,” he says, shoving his longish brown hair from his eyes, his red tie at half mast.
“Hey, Richard.”
I join Reese in the hallway and we walk to the office down the hallway. He sets a tape recorder on the mahogany desk and leans on the edge next to it. “I want to play the leaked phone call. Ready?”
“Hit me with it,” I say, sitting down in one of the wing back chairs as he punches play.
Dana Warren, my husband’s client and heiress to the Warren Empire, starts to speak: “He’s mean. He’s so mean. He says horrible things. He does horrible things. The world would be better without that man.”
“I understand wanting someone dead,” a male voice says. “You know I do. You know what I’ve been through.”
“Only you escaped. I can’t escape.”
“You can always walk away,” the man says.
“Not until the day he’s dead and he might even have provisions to enslave me after that. The money will be my prison. I don’t think I want it anymore. I don’t want it.”
“No one walks away from that kind of money. When he’s gone, you’ll have control.”
“He’ll find a way to make sure I don’t. I need to just—"
The tape cuts off. “Where’s the rest of it?”
“I don’t have it and Dana swears that’s when she said she loved her father. She says she said she couldn’t hurt him but it hurts that he could hurt her.”
“Who was the man?”
“Reginald Hicks, her boyfriend, and he says that he didn’t leak the call. He doesn’t know how anyone got it. He’s willing to testify to the rest of the content of the call.”
“Do you believe him?”
“I do.”
“Delay the trial. You have to get a new jury, maybe a new location outside the city.”
He gives a shake of his head. “She won’t let me.”
I blanch. “What? Why?”
“She wants it over. She says she’s considered suicide from the stress of it all.”
“Please tell me you got her help.”
He scrubs his jaw. “I’m trying. I want you to talk to her.”
“Of course,” I say. “I’ll do what I can. You believe her right? The suicide thing isn’t guilt?”
“I’m sure there is guilt there but not for the murder. There’s no evidence but her inheritance to convict her. The man was evil, which I’m going to show in court. He destroyed people and hurt people just because he could. I don’t think her feelings were abnormal.”
“I need to see if I can rework my column for tomorrow and include this.” I grab his phone. “I have to call my editor and you need one hell of an opening statement.”
“Now you know why I say my opening sucks.”
“Yeah. It’s obsolete now.” I punch in Melanie, my editor’s, number.
“Cat,” Melanie greets. “Why did I know I’d be getting this call? Yes, you can have time to rework tomorrow’s column.”
“How long?”
“I need it now.”
“I need two hours.”
“You can have one.”
“Two it is.”
“Cat—”
“You know you want that voicemail covered and you know readers are going to look to me to see what I say. My husband is the defense counsel.”
“Fine. Two.”
We disconnect and I look at Reese. “I have to work on my column and you have to work on your opening but for both, I told Elsa, this wasn’t the opposing counsel. They’d—”
“—wait until, mid-trial when we couldn’t move the trial. Agreed. So who the hell did this?”
“The boyfriend. It has to be him.”
“It’s too obvious,” he argues.
“Right. It is. And yet sometimes that’s what makes things less obvious.”
“Don’t point a finger at him,” he says. “I need him on the stand, on our side.”
“No one walks away from that kind of money, he said. He’s the boyfriend. Were they engaged? Because maybe he was afraid she would walk away and he’d get screwed.”